A brutal but impressive soulslike that makes pushing through its devastating bosses worth the effort.
I’m exhausted after playing The First Berserker: Khazan. My hands ache, my brain is fried, and I’ve often had to step away in frustration. It’s a long, brutally difficult game, one often expecting near-perfection in its toughest encounters. Like a new military recruit, this Soulslike extension of developer Neople’s Dungeon & Fighter universe broke me down and, over time, built me back up into a lethal weapon that was prepared to take on whatever hellish nightmares it had in store. Even when I hit seemingly insurmountable roadblocks for hours at a time, I somehow found myself reveling in battles that enjoyably took me to the brink of my abilities.
The First Berserker: Khazan is a classic revenge tale. Khazan, a celebrated general, is betrayed by his empire and labeled a traitor. After being gravely injured while apprehended, he is revived and possessed by a melded legion of vicious warrior spirits who antagonize him into doing their bidding. The Blade Phantom, as the ethereal symbiote is known, is more concerned with advancing the objectives of the underworld from which it hails, while Khazan is out for the blood of those who wronged him. This setup provides plenty to build on, tying grounded medieval politics to the occult forces leeching their way into the world, but the story after that is mostly thin and underwhelming.
Khazan’s tour of vengeance is mission-based rather than giving you an open or branching area to explore freely, and he will routinely return to a sparse hub area known as The Crevice between them. Outside of being visually interesting as a floating stone sanctuary with mysterious broken staircases and far-off platforms, there’s not a lot to do apart from manage your inventory from time to time before pressing on to the next mission. Distressed villagers, otherworldly advisors, former military cohorts, and more add some minor connective tissue to the ongoing plot, but overall there’s shockingly little to learn here. Instead, it’s more a mechanical necessity to pick up optional quests or craft, upgrade, and augment gear for Khazan than an area to foster further flavor.
Being a well-honed instrument of war, Khazan has a handful of tools at his disposal to slaughter his enemies – although it took a long time before I felt like I was on his perceived level of capability. An early mission introduces you to The First Berserker’s three types of weaponry: You can choose to use the powerful but slow and defensive greatsword, a nimble stamina-draining spear, or the whirling assault of the dual blades. I enjoy how unique each weapon type is from the others, offering transformative move sets ranging from defensive and methodical to all-out aggressive.
Each weapon is further expanded with a full skill tree that enhances Khazan’s effectiveness in battle. Nodes on these trees modify your basic attacks, like altering how your charged Potent Blow (or heavy attack) works, changing the stamina depletion for actions like dodging and blocking, or providing new moves entirely that spend a resource called Spirit Points in combat. My Khazan felt way different to play by the end of the roughly 85-hour campaign than he did at the start, but it took dozens of hours to get to that point and plenty of experimentation. There are a lot of ways to kit out Khazan as you level him up, and it’s rather fun figuring out which moves and perks best fit my playstyle to help me slice my way out of its hardening conflicts.
The First Berserker lets you swap between your three weapons freely, but with little overlap between their various abilities, what’s normally a quick switch is actually a dramatic change and a hassle. For instance, in Dark Souls, most weapons boil down to having light and heavy attacks, with maybe a special ability available when switching to a two-handed grip. Weapons in The First Berserker, on the other hand, allow for up to six of the previously mentioned Spirit attacks and further optimization of their skill trees. It’s too much to deal with when equipping what is essentially a bespoke class. That’s why I dedicated myself to the dual blades during my playthrough, which I continued to tweak and learn about with every big fight I picked. Thankfully, if I did ever want to make the big jump to the greatsword or spear, you can reallocate skill points at will, but the process is just obtuse and annoying enough to make doing so on the fly unappealing.
Once you embark on any of The First Berserker’s mainline missions, the structure is extremely close to what’s expected in a Soulslike. Each level, whether that’s a ruined village, a crumbling castle, or the obligatory poison swamp, plays out similarly: You’ll slay dangerous enemies patrolling the area, figure out how to survive with limited healing items, collect spoils of the dead, and use them to level up at this game’s version of a bonfire, called a Blade Nexus. It’s an overly familiar formula that’s certainly inoffensive in its design, but it recreates that loop well enough, with levels smartly built to weave back to prior respites via shortcuts. Exploration is sadly almost non-existent, making each level more about getting from point to point. There’s a lack of cool optional areas to stray into or bosses to stumble across while adventuring that could have given main levels some much-needed spice.
Capping off each mission is a tooth-and-nail fight with that area’s boss, each of which represents a potentially substantial roadblock before you can continue to enjoy The First Berserker. The first big encounter I struggled with was the end boss of Mission 2, a manifestation of souls like the ones inhabiting our newly possessed hero. Its aggressive melee attacks would quickly kill me, and after several unsuccessful attempts and unforeseen weapon swaps from my adversary, I needed to try another strategy to finally break through. Another early boss, a bipedal goat demon wielding a flaming spike and hammer, caused plenty of grief as well by hitting hard and often, occasionally lighting the battlefield ablaze with a carpet of flames. At first, I tried to grind weaker enemies around the level to collect Khazan’s version of souls, called Lacrima, to boost my stats and give myself a better chance of living. It helped, but ultimately didn’t do enough to tip the scales. I then took a close look at my gear and opted for a tankier build. Still no dice.
Khazan’s bosses are just painfully tough, and the early ones are like a brick wall, with some burning upwards of five hours of my time alone. Smaller enemies leading up to a boss will somewhat teach you how to deal with certain aspects of them, but there’s little to ramp you into what is continually asked of you moving forward. There’s also no easy way to smash your way through these early walls in The First Berserker, like finding an overpowered item or excessively juicing your stats. Even in a brutal game like Elden Ring, a notorious early boss like Margit can be overcome more easily if you spend some time getting stronger in the areas before him, but while grinding out Lacrima and levels early on helps, it’s not the cure to every situation. In turn, this immediate difficulty spike genuinely made me want to stop playing after the first few levels – but these encounters began to win me over, and I’m glad I stuck with it.
What was once a peak point of frustration became my favorite part of The First Berserker; the bosses are ultimately what make it worth playing. While they are incredibly hard to take down, every one can eventually be read like a book, telegraphing the moves they’re about to make and predictable strategies they’ll use throughout the fight. The process of learning each oppressive bosses’ moves and tells, figuring out when it’s ideal to dodge or block, is extra important in The First Berserker, and it’s how I ultimately figured out how to enjoy the experience in the face of overwhelming odds. Every death that was once met with confusion and irritation became a learning experience I looked forward to absorbing. Every restart was a chance to land my attacks and survive with newfound knowledge. Yes, there are plenty of cheap attacks, one-hit kills, and groan-inducing mistakes, but I enjoyed studying each big boss I came across as much as the catharsis of finally taking them down.
Conquering many of the early insurmountable feats was also thanks in part to two great quality-of-life decisions Neople has implemented into The First Berserker. First, dying repeatedly at a boss isn’t for nothing, but rather grants precious Lacrima based on how far you took their life down. Each upgrade that helps you afford gets you a little bit further the next time, and gaining levels by grinding the boss you need to beat is far more valuable than breaking away to farm elsewhere. Second, skill points are awarded separately from the levels you get from cashing in Lacrima, and are instead earned through a more traditional experience bar that is filled simply by being in battle. While not necessarily an increase in stats, unlocking new moves to use or enhancing your favorites can be just the thing needed to beat a stubborn encounter.